- Hey, I'm John Kanell.
Today on Preppy Kitchen,
we're making delicious sweet potato fries.
So let's get started.
First off, we're gonna grab some sweet potatoes,
and I gotta tell you,
there is a big sweet potato fry controversy.
Basically, it's to soak or not to soak.
There's two trains of thought.
So I thought in this video,
it would be fun to show both methods
and see which one's better.
I'm gonna try and rope Brian in
to see if he'll do a blind taste test, we'll see.
You're gonna want either two big
or three medium sized sweet potatoes.
These seem pretty large to me so that'll be good,
also a vegetable peeler.
Get a nice knife out too.
We are gonna use a little bit of olive oil
and some seasonings, but those come later.
So basically, everyone loves a nice crispy fry
and sweet potato fries can be kind of soggy
when you bake them.
So the most popular method is just to bake 'em up.
However, a lot of people are telling me
that they get good results
from soaking them in cold water overnight.
So, I thought we could start this video today
and come back tomorrow.
All I have to do is peel this potato, cut it, and soak it.
Sweet potatoes are actually delicious
and they're very nutritious as well.
I'm gonna chop this up now.
You want that knife to be sharp
because a dull knife is your enemy.
Okay, we want quarter of an inch thick slices.
So one, two, three.
Lots of surface area
because later on, we're gonna be dusting these in cornstarch
and then giving them some seasoning as well.
I like to cut my sweet potatoes
like a little bit of a conveyor belt.
One, two,
and look at all these beautiful little fries
you have already.
I think sweet potato fries is a great way to get your kids
to have a little bit more beta carotene in their diet
and introduce them to foods like sweet potatoes
that maybe they're not like super friendly with.
It's interesting 'cause kids go through a phase
where they're really experimental, will try anything,
and then they grow up
and then they start expressing opinions.
So, you have to reintroduce foods to them.
Our sweet potatoes are all cut up.
This looks beautiful, really easy.
You can use ice water or just cold water, plop these in.
(water splashing)
I kinda wanna release some of the starch
and just get them nice and crispy, in theory.
Um, should I grab some ice for this, make it really cold?
Let's do that.
Ahh, so cold!
(chuckles)
This is gonna go into the fridge overnight.
These guys have been soaking 24 hours.
The hope is that any excess starch
will just be dispersed into the water
and that you'll have crispier fries
that don't stick together as much.
We'll find out.
In the meantime,
I'm gonna be peeling and chopping
another one for our control.
These fries are just gonna go
straight into our preparation, no soaking.
I'll keep them separate though,
and we're gonna see if I can taste the difference
or maybe if Brian can.
Sweet potatoes are great and the kids like them.
I will admit though, my favorite sweet potato preparation
is like a sweet potato casserole, mm.
The brown sugar, the butter.
Quarter-inch thick slices.
In case you're wondering, I'm using a Global knife.
These are my favorite
because they're kind of indestructible.
So they have like a metal handle
and I'm not getting paid to say this by the way,
I've had some really nice knives
that have gotten just trashed
because someone put them in the dishwasher by accident.
It's okay, we all make mistakes,
but this way, like, even if you mishandle it,
you can just sharpen it up again and it will be fine.
Nice quarter-inch thick fries.
I've noticed when I see these being photographed,
that they're all like perfect fries,
like they literally just take the very central ones out
and you never see some of the edge guys.
So these are totally fine, don't throw them away.
All right, clean this up and onto the next stage.
Head to that pantry.
And now we're gonna get some magic.
Wait, these guys are wet and cold, I don't like that
so let's just pour the water out.
(water splashing)
Give 'em one final rinse.
(water splashing)
Gonna grab a clean kitchen towel
just to get that excess liquid off.
So we're gonna do this twice,
once with our regular ones, once with the soaked ones.
First off, we're gonna grab
a good sized tablespoon, cornstarch.
Gonna sprinkle cornstarch over these guys.
You can also like plop them in a plastic bag
and give 'em a good shake.
Just a nice little coating, it'll help 'em crisp up.
I've been doing a lot of fried chicken tenders
and stuff like that,
and cornstarch is something you go through so quickly.
Okay, here's the deal.
This, plop that over here.
These guys, same deal.
Some people say this method is useful,
but I wonder if they're just copying over
what happens with actual like regular potatoes
'cause regular potatoes have more starch,
these guys don't have as much.
So I don't know how helpful it's actually gonna be.
In part because they've been like
completely soaked with water,
so even though we patted them dry
and I did a good job padding,
it's just like, they feel a bit wet to me.
These go on a separate baking sheet.
You're gonna drizzle with olive oil.
I'm gonna use my favorite tool,
which is an olive oil mister.
This lets you mist olive oil on veggies,
it's also good if you wanna air fry things.
So I use this from my air fried chicken stuff.
Give it a good spray.
I just wanna like mist the top.
And like, let's be real.
All the recipe is really like,
one teaspoon of olive oil drizzled,
like, are you kidding me?
It just galls me to no end
'cause you have to give them like
a little bit of oil all over the surface,
not like one drizzle on one part,
that does nothing, nothing!
You can let me know in the comments
if you've had like a recipe kinda like fail
because you actually followed like the silly
one little drop of oil rule.
One teaspoon drizzled over the surface, okay.
Wait, is the oven on?
Set that up into 400, needs to be nice and hot.
Mist your fries.
Mist your fries could be the name of a band.
All righty.
The last thing is, I'm gonna use some fine sea salt
and just sprinkle it over my fries for seasoning.
Gonna sprinkle some now
and a little bit more later when I give 'em a toss.
There are many seasonings you could use
for your sweet potato fries.
So let me know in the comments like what your favorite is.
Some people like to have like a little bit of a kick
from some chili,
something like seasoned salt
with something extra added to it, it's totally up to you.
I almost forgot to tell you,
these guys can just be like higgledy-piggledy
all over the baking sheet, spread them out.
And if you need to,
you could even split them up into different baking sheets.
I think I might do that.
Now we're gonna go into the oven 400 degrees
for eight to 10 minutes
and then we're gonna take 'em out and do something else.
Okay, after about nine minutes, I pull these out.
So we're just flipping them all over.
Just make sure they're still spaced out a little bit
after you flip them over.
Pop 'em back into the oven for eight to 10 minutes
until they're nice and crispy.
Repeat the other batch and we'll give 'em a taste.
Our sweet potato fries are out of the oven.
I've been munching on them, but I have two plates here.
They look the same.
Brian, take one bite of each
and tell me which one you like better.
That was A, this is B.
- [Brian] I mean they taste pretty similar.
- Taste, texture all the same?
- [Brian] There's something I liked about the first one
like a little bit better, but I don't know.
- Okay.
- [Brian] I think it might haven had just more salt on it.
(laughs)
- Well, by a hair he liked the soaked ones.
They're actually almost exactly the same
so I don't know if it makes any difference.
I will say like,
if you wanna prep something the night ahead,
go ahead and soak them.
If you wanna bake them right ahead, that works too.
That's gonna be perfect with a little bit of dipping sauce,
mm, maybe a Turkey burger.
I'll see you in the next video.
If you liked this video, check out my side dish playlist.